Subversive Southerner; Anne Braden and the Struggle for Racial Justice in the Cold War South

by Catherine Fosl; Foreword by Angela Davis

• ISBN13: 9781403965448
• ISBN10: 1403965447
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 2004-05-01
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

Anne McCarty Braden, a southern white woman, broke from her segregationist and privileged past in the late 1940s to become a lifelong crusader for racial injustice. Martin Luther King praised Braden's extraordinary integrity in his famous Letter from a Birming-ham Jail, but even among civil rights supporters, she was a con-troversial figure. Branded a communist and seditionist by several southern politicians, Braden nevertheless became a role model to students who launched the 1960s sit-in movements and to successive generations of young peace and justice activists. Through this compelling oral history of Braden's life, Catherine Fosl demonstrates how racism, sexism, and anticommunism inter- sected in the twentieth-century American South.

Author Biography

Catherine Fosl teaches Women’s Studies and Humanities at the University of Louisville. She is the author of Women for All Seasons: The Story of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.

Table of Contents

Foreword by Angela Y. Davis	ix
Acknowledgments	xii
List of Abbreviations	xv
Chronology of Anne Braden's Life	xvii
Introduction	xx
PART ONE
Prologue The Power of Place	3	(10)
Chapter 1 A White Southern Childhood	13	(20)
Chapter 2 Intellectual Awakening	33	(24)
Chapter 3 Alabama Newspaperwoman	57	(26)
PART TWO
Chapter 4 Political Awakening	83	(20)
Chapter 5 Marriage and Movement	103	(32)
Chapter 6 The Wade Case-No Turning Back	135	(40)
Chapter 7 Fighting Back-The 1950s Resistance Movement	175	(26)
Chapter 8 A Voice Crying in the Wilderness-Early SCEF Years	201	(44)
PART THREE
Chapter 9 The Mass Civil Rights Movement-Beginning of a New Day	245	(24)
Chapter 10 Opening Up the Southern Police State	269	(24)
Chapter 11 End of an Era	293	(20)
PART FOUR
Chapter 12 The Next Three Decades:The Struggle Continues	313	(20)
Epilogue	333	(10)
Notes	343	(50)
Bibliography	393	(14)
Index	407